The city of Baton Rouge has always enjoyed the benefits of a strategic location along the banks of the Mississippi River. It is located right on the last deep ports of the Mississippi, which make it the last stop upriver for deep ocean tankers and cargo carriers. This benefitted the city long before the invention of web slings and other synthetic materials, as naturally made goods from furniture to produce could be sent up river for processing.
The results, of course, of the deep water port here was a burgeoning industrial town which focused on unloading, processing, and shipping many of the most important staples in the United States of America. These staples included grain, timber, and foreign supplies shipped up from ocean ports.
The location of Baton Rouge along the Mississippi made it an ideal stop for tankers containing oil from Texas as well as countries overseas. During the early years of the twentieth century, the city became known as the perfect spot for industries processing salt, natural gas, and petroleum. Standard Oil got its start in Baton Rouge in 1909, long before its executives would begin carrying blackberry leather cases and laptops in order to get a day's work done. Petroleum plants would see a heyday during World War II, as production was stepped up in order to support America's war effort.
That production stayed in full swing in the years after the war, as an American public hungry for easy transportation began to buy automobiles en masse. The plants themselves would attract workers from all over the world, from those who carried advanced degrees in business to those who understood the correct application of Y strainers and other materials critical to the refinement process.
The growth of the city as these workers arrived would lead to the development of its second biggest industry, the construction sector. Even today, this building boom continues in Baton Rouge, with both improved and new construction projects ongoing throughout the city.
Those projects mean even more jobs, of course, and with those jobs comes the demand for ever more products. Today's safe workplace requires everything from drug testing supplies to safety equipment to run, thus the construction industry in Baton Rouge continues to support spin off industries of its own.
Baton Rouge continues to be a major shipping center for many different products today. Cars manufactured overseas, electronics delivered in collapsible plastic containers, and of course grain and crude are still unloaded and repackaged at several points along the Mississippi in Baton Rouge.
Today's industrial picture in Baton Rouge has expanded even further. The city is seen as one of the most important high tech hubs in the United States, as well as an important area for medical research. The film industry is also making great strides in the city, with Louisiana's only full service audio and sound stage located here.
All in all, the city of Baton Rouge enjoys quite a diverse industrial foundation. It continues to be a center of major importance as far as international shipping and petrochemical processing, and many new industries have developed alongside these to form the economic backbone of the city.
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